Aye, Aye,Captain

I'll try to catch up a little tonight. If I haven't mentioned before, Carol and I are away from home for seven weeks, with six of them being in Europe with friends and family. We are on the Danube right now on a two week cruise and it is NOT blue, but it's beautiful anyway. All those times I've read about and taught about the history and places in eastern Europe, I never really knew much about it. Not that I do now. The history is so deep as compared to the US and the places are incredibly old and huge. So, here goes......... (by the way, I'll have to add pictures later- the ship computer system doesn't have USB ports- I assume for their security) Sept. 2, 2006 Today we all went different ways. Judy and Paul went off shopping, Carol and Kay went to the Communist Museum and I went to the Museum of Decorative Design. We all met for dinner at a small pizzaria for some wondrful food- again!! If I haven't already said it, Prague is a most beautiful city. Sept. 3, 2006 We were up early this morning and left the Marriott Prague for a train ride to Budapest. We shared our train compartment with a young telecommunications worker who works for NATO. As we talked with him about cultural differences, we found out that when we ordered one of something and used out index finger to show one, we were actually flipping them off!! Ah, the ugly American strikes again........ They would finger count one with their thumb, then their index finger and thumb for two- never their index finger alone. Oh well............. Once in Budapest we caught taxis to where our ship was berthed on the River Danube. Our ship is the Amadagio on the Amadeus Waterways Co. I'll give the web address later. Here we caught up with Connie and Fred- that's Connie as in Carol's sister from Harrisburg, PA. Actually that's why we are here, Connie gave this to herself for her 60th. As I said, we'll be on this river(s) and canel cruise for fourteen days. I never knew that the Danube and Rhine Rivers are connected by canels and that we'll go through 60 locks!! Kind of like the Panama Canal, but small locks, many more and really spread out. I hope this looks OK, the European keyboard or ship keyboard is layed out differently in some places.